Challenge: Total Confederate Victory

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to, in 1900, make the Confederate States of America exist as a nation while the United States of America have fallen. Earliest possible POD: 1850.
 
Actually, no. This was really inspired by the DBWI in the ASB forum where our Confederacy goes to a Confederate-victory TL.
 
Possible, but not easy.

Presumably, the CSA won't coe to dominate everything that was the U.S. However, if one secession works, then others might as well.

I would imagine that this optimal CSA would include all of the following as a result of the war:
  • Virginia (Likely excluding WVa.)
  • Kentucky
  • Tennessee
  • North Carolina
  • South Carolina
  • Georgia
  • Florida
  • Alabama
  • Mississippi
  • Louisiana
  • Arkansas
  • Missouri
  • Indian Territory (Oklahoma)
  • Texas
  • New Mexico Territory (AZ & NM)

One assumes that such a CSA could grow slightly, but it is unlikely for it to gain more from the former U.S.

Replacing the rest of the U.S. could be the Cascade Republic, California, Deseret, Republic of Jefferson, Confederation of the Council Fires (Plains Indians nation, lead by the Sioux), Lake Confederation or similar name (IA, MN, IL, WI, MI, IN), Allegheny Republic (OH, WV, MD, DE, PA, NJ, NY), Confederation of New England.
 
Replacing the rest of the U.S. could be the Cascade Republic, California, Deseret, Republic of Jefferson, Confederation of the Council Fires (Plains Indians nation, lead by the Sioux), Lake Confederation or similar name (IA, MN, IL, WI, MI, IN), Allegheny Republic (OH, WV, MD, DE, PA, NJ, NY), Confederation of New England.
Just because the USA can not defeat the CSA does not mean that the rest would automatically disintegrate. The Union could easily concentrate on holding what states it had left and would have the strength to do so. Any territories could though slip away. That would leave Deseret under the Mormons and a series of Indian tribal states; without the white man as an enemy I doubt that they would form a single confederation. After all they will not do so until the end when they were under attack and with the pressure off so to speak they would have less incentive.

Assuming that the Union holds California and every state east of and including Minnesota and Iowa what is not on Wendell's list that would leave the CSA larger in area, but the USA greater in population and industry.

All of which leaves the Confeds with an interesting conundrum. If they build a railroad into New Mexico (logically they will) how do they get the land for the final few miles to the Pacific coast? :confused:
 
Would it be possible to have a scenario reminiscent of How Few Remain?

The remaining US could get involved in a war with the British, the CSA, and a number of Indian tribes. Would there be a way that the US could screw it up badly enough that some of the US would become part of Canada, some states become part of the CSA (maybe former slave states), and maybe 2 or 3 states get left over and decide to erase their state boundaries and merge into one country?

The thing is, it's just not plausible that the US would screw up so badly.
 
This is pretty easy really - just have the CSA win it's independence, and then create a set of socio-political circumstances in which the rump USA falls apart.
 
Just because the USA can not defeat the CSA does not mean that the rest would automatically disintegrate. The Union could easily concentrate on holding what states it had left and would have the strength to do so. Any territories could though slip away. That would leave Deseret under the Mormons and a series of Indian tribal states; without the white man as an enemy I doubt that they would form a single confederation. After all they will not do so until the end when they were under attack and with the pressure off so to speak they would have less incentive.

Assuming that the Union holds California and every state east of and including Minnesota and Iowa what is not on Wendell's list that would leave the CSA larger in area, but the USA greater in population and industry.

All of which leaves the Confeds with an interesting conundrum. If they build a railroad into New Mexico (logically they will) how do they get the land for the final few miles to the Pacific coast? :confused:
I was not suggesting that my scenario was likely, but that I felt it matched what the originating post in this thread sought.
 
Make the course of events mirror TL-191 till the Second Mexican War or equivalent. Then, have the CSA willing to crack the USA instead of making a soft peace to stimulate reconciliation. Maybe the USA is forced to give the whole New Mexico/Arizona territory and to pay great war indemnities to the CSA, Britain and France. As the US economy goes down the toilet, "Pacifica" decides to break out and a new seccession war occurs, worsening the effects. With foreign help, the Pacific Republic becomes independent. All what is left of the USA is a loose confederation of impoverished states.

Ey, this was intended to be a worse case scenario for the USA. Don't throw so much stones at me.
 
All what is left of the USA is a loose confederation of impoverished states.
Not that improverished. New England was an economic powerhouse. However without the Great Plains to tap for resources it could grind to a halt. Given that that is were the coal for the first half of the American Industrial Revolution is, none of other North American countries continues it and thus at the turn of the twentieth century there is no American colossus to provide war loans in the Great War.
 
Not that improverished. New England was an economic powerhouse. However without the Great Plains to tap for resources it could grind to a halt. Given that that is were the coal for the first half of the American Industrial Revolution is, none of other North American countries continues it and thus at the turn of the twentieth century there is no American colossus to provide war loans in the Great War.

Michael

I think your taking a wider definition of New England that I'm used to as it sounds like your including Pennsylvania, Ohio and possibly some other points further west. [Correction, just realised I've misunderstood what you said].

However you are right that the rump US would still have substantial resources even if it lost much of the west and centre as well as the south. To get impoverishment it would probably require that this be followed by internal conflict and possibly the collapse of civil rule. Get some sort of state dominated by concern about the external threat from its neighbours and hence highly militarised and somewhat paranoid and xenophobic and you could have it decline into relative irrelevance.

If there was something like a Great War the lack of a significant unified US is probably not too important. You would have a richer, probably also larger Canada, some Pacific republic and the south able to pick up the trading slack. Also the lack of a strong US would probably mean other nations, most noticeably Britain would be more powerful. Britain and Canada would probably be a lot more militarised - albeit still relatively un-militarised by continental European standards - if facing a cold war type situation in N America.

Steve
 
Last edited:
Substantial sources of coal exist in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and southern Ohio to supply the industrial boom in New England and upstate NEw York. With iron ore from Minnesota and Pennsylvania coal (and oil, too - commercial drilling started there in the 19th C.), your economic engine should chug along quite nicely, even if the southern states and sopme of the western ones are shorn off the Republic.

If the Pacific Republic ("Norton's Empire" for the whimsically inclined?) broke off with foreign help, whose help would that be? Britain might find a Balkanized western North America a useful brake on Yankee "Manifest Destiny", and on the Confederate version as well. And while the CSA might look thoughtfully at the slender strip of Mexican Territory separating their almost-transcontinental railroad from the Gulf of California and imagine wresting it away from Mexico, they'd likely stop short if the border between Mexico and the Pacific Republic is guaranteed by the British Empire.

If a CSA/Mexican/Pacific brangle gets sticky, it could force a wedge between the CSA and Great Britain, which lets a little heat off the USA, who would otherwise have British territory and British allies on all three of its international borders.
 
Substantial sources of coal exist in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and southern Ohio to supply the industrial boom in New England and upstate NEw York. With iron ore from Minnesota and Pennsylvania coal (and oil, too - commercial drilling started there in the 19th C.), your economic engine should chug along quite nicely, even if the southern states and sopme of the western ones are shorn off the Republic.

I think there was some confusion on what Michael meant, as to whether he was saying the coal was in N England or western territories that might have been lost under the worst scenario. However agree that the bulk of the key resources for the early industrial development is still in the 'rump' US and barring extremely bad government it would be a major economic power by say 1900.


If the Pacific Republic ("Norton's Empire" for the whimsically inclined?) broke off with foreign help, whose help would that be? Britain might find a Balkanized western North America a useful brake on Yankee "Manifest Destiny", and on the Confederate version as well. And while the CSA might look thoughtfully at the slender strip of Mexican Territory separating their almost-transcontinental railroad from the Gulf of California and imagine wresting it away from Mexico, they'd likely stop short if the border between Mexico and the Pacific Republic is guaranteed by the British Empire.

I think Britain would be the only power that is likely to supply such help. Given an hostile US and hence the threat to Canada it would be an obvious option to support a separatist movement in the Pacific. [Both to weaken an hostile US and gain a useful trading partner]. Also it has the maritime power and economic and financial resources to be in the best position to intervene. Only exception might be if a French presence in Mexico survived in which case it would also have an interest in supporting such an independence movement.

If a CSA/Mexican/Pacific brangle gets sticky, it could force a wedge between the CSA and Great Britain, which lets a little heat off the USA, who would otherwise have British territory and British allies on all three of its international borders.

I don't think there would be any great political closeness between Britain and the CSA unless the hostility of the US forced it. While there are some potential economic common interests, the preference of both for low/no tariffs and the cotton link, the political differences are too deep. It would take a strong common threat - as with Republican France and Tzarist Russia, to prompt any even informal alliance I think.

Steve
 
Top